With three novels and one short-story collection now translated into English, Haruki Murakami has emerged as the most significant Japanese novelist in decades. And with this hugely ambitious new book—a true magnum opus, equal in scope and execution to Yukio Mishima's posthumous tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility—he will take his place in the inter- national pantheon of contemporary literature.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is many things: the story of a marriage that mysteri- ously collapses; a jeremiad against the su- perficiality of contemporary politics; an investigation of painfully suppressed memo- ries of war; a bildungsroman about a com- passionate young man's search for his own identity as well as that of his nation. All of Murakami's storytelling genius—combining elements of detective fiction, deadpan humor, and metaphysical truth, and swiftly transforming commonplace realism into sur- real revelation—is on full, seamless display. And in turning his literary imagination loose on a broad social and political canvas, he bares nothing less than the soul of a country steeped in the violence of the twentieth century.

Deceptively simple, wise, poignant, funny, and horrifying, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a mesmerizing saga of personal conscience and the power of history: a stunning achievement whose impact will be felt worldwide.
--front flap